Thursday, 6 November 2014

Language skills and the social gradient

I have recently returned from a very busy 5-week overseas
trip as part of my sabbatical leave this semester. This trip enabled me to
visit a small handful of researchers and academic departments whose interests
intersect with mine with respect to language development/disorders, early
literacy instruction, and psychosocial aspects of being an adolescent with a
language-learning disability. I spent most of my time in the UK, but also had
some time in the USA, the latter predominantly dealing with issues pertaining
to language competence of young people in the youth justice system.

My trip provided some wonderful opportunities to reflect on
contemporary issues and challenges pertaining to the language-learning
impairment field, and to consider ways in which current research agendas in
various centres are tackling different aspects of some of the “big questions”
of our time.

For me, one of the most compelling issues for researchers,
policy makers, and practitioners is the social gradient that exists with
respect to early language exposure, and to language skills and academic success
during the school years (and no doubt beyond, but data is lacking on this).

Many readers of this blog would be familiar with the work of
Hart and Risley in the USA in the mid 1990s. In a nutshell, these workers recruited 42 families who were stratified across
three layers of socio-economic status (SES) spectrum – parents from
professional backgrounds, those from working class backgrounds, and those who
were recipients of state welfare. At the outset of the study, these families
had an infant who was 9 months old, and over a period of 36 months, Hart and
Risley tape-recorded an hour per month of child-directed parental language. Their quantitative
findings are summarised in the figure below, however it is must be noted that
there were important qualitative differences across the SES spectrum too. Most
notably, children of professional parents tended to experience parental language
that was more encouraging, and they also received more expansions and
elaborations on their utterances.

Although Hart and Risley’s work in this area is probably the
most well-known, it’s important to note that similar findings have been
reported by other workers as well, e.g. Hoff (2003), Locke
et al. (2002), Spencer et al. (2012), and Weisleder and Fernald (2013). Also,
it must be remembered that of course some families who are struggling economically
never-the-less have the human and social capital to provide linguistically enriching
environments for their children. Conversely, some high-income families struggle
in this regard. So SES correlates with, rather than determines the
nature of the verbal input that children receive. Studies such as these are not about "parent-blame", irrespective of the fact that the tabloid media will mis-use them in that way from time-to-time. Rather, this line of inquiry is simply about being data-driven and then considering applications of the data - as should be the case in all social sciences research

So – low SES alone does not account for poor language skills
in vulnerable young people; nor, incidentally, are such differences accounted
for on the basis of nonverbal IQ. Other factors, such as chaotic family
structure, disrupted education, and developmental comorbidities such as
behavioural difficulties all need to be considered.

Perhaps language is not quite as robust to the effects of
environmental disruption / deprivation as we might previously have believed.

What is inescapable, however, is the fact that there is
a social gradient with respect to early language exposure and at least
mid-range language outcomes such as academic achievement. Schools, teachers,
clinicians and policy makers all know that some schools cater to communities
that are economically and socially disadvantaged and this disadvantage
manifests as lower achievement overall on tasks that require strong verbal
skills. And it’s hard to think of many aspects of an academic curriculum that don’t
require strong verbal skills.

However inescapable such a conclusion may be though, it raises
many more questions than it answers, for example:

What is the basis of
this gradient? Exactly what is it about being poor, and/or less well
educated, that reduces the quantity and quality of language experiences made
available to young children? Is this purely a social-environmental phenomenon
that can be “rectified” by changing the behaviour of key adults in a child’s
immediate networks?

Is it possible that what
looks like a social phenomenon actually reflects an underlying, genetically
transmitted disadvantage with respect to oral language skills? I am no
expert on genetics (far from it!), but of course we must recognise that many
human characteristics are genetically influenced, if not determined – e.g. height, body
morphology, eye colour, skin tones, and so on. There is an established link between genetic factors and language skills. Is this link enough, however to account for a stratification of society with respect to capacities for acquiring and using language?

If the social gradient
is biologically determined, is there any point trying to intervene to improve
the life-chances of children with “deficient” language skills? A nihilistic
view of the world would suggest that such interventions are unlikely to be
beneficial and/or economically justified. The evidence on interventions such as
Head Start (the USA) and Sure Start (the UK) is not exactly bursting with
reasons for excitement over the benefits of targeting “at-risk” communities and
providing a verbal “top-up” prior to school entry.

If a child comes from an
economically disadvantaged community/family/school and has oral language skills
that place him/her in a clinical range on standardised language measures, do we
simply attribute the language profile to social circumstances? Cansuch a child also have what would, under other circumstances be referred to
as a “specific language impairment” (SLI)? If the answer to the last question is
“yes”, how do we determine which poor children have “language impairments”, Vs
having language skills that are commensurate with their position on the social
gradient, albeit woefully inadequate when it comes to academic and social
success at school?

These are all big questions facing child language
researchers, policy makers, and practitioners in speech-language pathology as
well as education. These questions are also central to the current terminology debate concerning children with language
difficulties.

My view is that while it is important for researchers to
vigorously investigate and classify the various aetiological pathways that lead
to compromised language skills, we cannot forsake the academic and social
outcomes of large numbers of children simply because we know they are
“poor”. In fact, evidence would suggest
that such children may derive particular benefits from rigourous application of
evidence in the early years’ classroom. For example, a pilot investigation we recently conducted in Victoria suggests that targeting teacher
knowledge and practice with respect to early oral language and literacy
development has a direct and beneficial effect on the performance of children
in disadvantaged schools. A larger scale investigation is now attempting to
replicate this finding, and I hope I can report positive outcomes via this blog in due course.

References / Further reading

Hart,
B. & Risley, T. (1995). Meaningful Differences in Everyday Parenting
and Intellectual Development in Young American Children. Baltimore:
Brookes.

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A blog on child and adolescent language, language competence and social disadvantage, early literacy instruction, youth offending, communication skills and the student doctor....and a few other bits and pieces.

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About Me

I'm a Professor and Head of the La Trobe Rural Health School and live and work in Bendigo, central Victoria. My research passion is language and literacy competence - primarily as this pertains to vulnerability in early life.
Views expressed on this blog are my own.
I have recently published a book (released by J&R Publishing in March 2017) with Dr Caroline Bowen:
Making Sense of Interventions for Children with Developmental Disorders. A Guide for Parents and Professionals.
http://www.jr-press.co.uk/making-sense-of-interventions-for-childrens-developmental-disorders.html
Australian orders can be placed at:
http://www.sandpiperpublications.com.au/Making-Sense-of-Interventions-scp100568.html